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From Twilight to Gutenberg: Free Ebooks

June 11, 2010

If you haven’t heard by now, Stephenie Meyer has a new Twilight story out. It’s called The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella. As the title suggests it’s about Bree Tanner, a vampire in Eclipse. The novella can be read online for free until July 5th. I’ve never read any of the Twilight Saga, so the news of a new story doesn’t excite me very much. But, books that are free to read do catch my eye. Unfortunately, the tale has to be read on the website. It can’t be downloaded or printed. However, other authors offer free stories that can be saved to a computer and read anytime.

Neil Gaiman has a few stories available at his website. I suggest reading “A Study in Emerald,” a fun little story that combines Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft’s Old Gods. There’s also author‘s like Cory Doctorow, who offers all of their novels for free under the Creative Commons license (just click on the book covers on the right side to get to the download links). But, I only mention those because I like reading Science Fiction. If your interests vary, you might want to look in other places.

Project Gutenberg is a digital library. Its creator, Michael Hart, created the first electronic text in 1971 when he realized that computers could be used to store information. The website has over 30,000 ebooks available for free download. Many of them are classics, but those are fun to read, too (or maybe not if you professor is making you do it).

All of this just goes to show that there are places to get free (legal) ebooks. I’m sure there are many other authors that have free stories on their websites. Just search around a bit until you find something you like.

About Jim McKenzie Smith

Founder and CEO of Cash4Books.net. I'm an entrepreneur. I love ideas, solving problems, and learning new technology. My personal "why" is to find a better way and share it with others. Follow me on Twitter: @pdxJimSmith. Find me on Linked In: linkedin.com/in/cash4books/.